The present invention relates to a packaging machine.
Explicit reference will be made in the following specification to the field of packaging machines for manufacturing packets of cigarettes, albeit no limitation is implied.
Packaging machines embraced by the prior art, as disclosed for example in U.S. Pat. No. 4,918,901, comprise a wrapping wheel equipped with a plurality of conveying heads each affording a first seat, of which the function is to admit and retain a product for wrapping, and a second seat serving to admit and retain a respective sheet of wrapping material held in a predetermined position across an opening presented by the first seat through the agency of a pair of vacuum type gripping elements located one on either side of the opening and operated by means of a control device mounted to the wrapping wheel in a central position.
In operation the wrapping wheel is made to rotate intermittently about a fixed central axis in such a way as to index the conveying head through a first infeed station, at which the product is directed into the first seat, then a second infeed station at which the wrapping sheet is taken up into the second seat, and finally an outfeed station where the product is ejected from the first seat in such a way as to associate with the wrapping sheet, and transferred together with the sheet to a further wrapping wheel.
Packaging machines of the type outlined above are somewhat costly inasmuch as the wrapping wheel must carry both the gripping elements and the relative control device, and tends as a result to be complex in design and construction.
The object of the present invention is to provide a packaging machine free from the drawback outlined above, and therefore simple and economical to carry into effect.